


Blame it on Texas

by stellarmeadow



Category: 9-1-1 (TV), 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: All in one drive, Buck has revelations, Coda, Episode S04E03 coda, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, No really so many revelations, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarmeadow/pseuds/stellarmeadow
Summary: TK's words set off a whole series of revelations in Buck's head that he really feels he should have figured out a while ago.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 90
Kudos: 816
Collections: 9-1-1 ▶ Edmundo "Eddie" Diaz / Evan "Buck" Buckley





	Blame it on Texas

**Author's Note:**

> This has been eating my brain since the crossover last night, so I wrote it tonight as a slightly early birthday present to myself (24 minutes until my birthday!) that I'm sharing with all of you! Hope you enjoy it!

“I gotta mention, though, I already have a boyfriend and it’s pretty serious, so….” 

_Wait, what?_ Buck turned the words over in his head a couple of times, but they still led to the same conclusion.

TK thought Buck was hitting on him.

He spun around to try to correct that impression, but TK was already around the corner, and Eddie was there instead, alone instead of with Firefox, thank goodness. 

“Where’s Hen?” Eddie asked.

Buck looked around, half his brain still focused on trying to work out why TK had thought Buck was hitting on him. “No idea,” he said finally.

“We need to get a move on if we’re going to make it to El Paso by dinner,” Eddie said. “Let me see if she’s in the med tent.”

He clapped a hand on Buck’s shoulder as he walked by, leaving a tingling in its wake that Buck recognized from a thousand random brushes he’d never realized were different from anyone else’s. Or maybe he had and he’d put it down to having never had a friend quite like Eddie. 

Then again, maybe the whole thing was just sleep deprivation with a side of smoke inhalation. 

Maybe he’d wake up after a good 12 hours or so of sleep and laugh it off.

_“I gotta mention, though, I already have a boyfriend….”_

Or maybe not.

***

“Buck. Hey, Buck.” 

Buck rubbed his cheek on his pillow and squeezed his eyes tighter, trying to recapture the dream he’d been having about falling asleep with Eddie. The dream was so real it was like he could smell him.

“Let him sleep.” 

“I would, but my arm is falling asleep.”

Buck opened his eyes, seeing only dark blue and a sort of tan for a second before his vision cleared, and the dark blue became Eddie’s Henley, stretched tight over his shoulder, and the tan was Eddie’s neck. 

“Sorry,” Buck said, sitting up quickly, “didn’t mean to fall asleep on you. I mean, _literally_ on you.”

“Oh please,” Hen said, “like you don’t do that ten times a shift?” 

Did he? How had he not noticed? Buck snuggled closer into the corner by the window, making sure there was daylight between him and Eddie. 

“My arm is awake again,” Eddie said, quietly, a hint of a smile in his voice. “If you need your pillow back.” 

“I’m good,” Buck said, closing his eyes and trying to go back to sleep, where things made sense and random people he’d just met weren’t making him question everything he did.

***

Sleep didn’t come, but he faked it well enough, at least until Eddie started telling the Hildy story. Buck had to wake up then, because Eddie had failed to mention exactly how crazy he’d gotten that night, piling up everything with a battery on the table and refusing to let them touch any of it.

“No, seriously,” Buck said. “I was waiting for him to bring out candles, turn off all the lights and unscrew the lightbulbs, just in case.” 

Eddie rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t that bad.”

“You took the batteries out of the remotes, Eddie.” 

“Okay, fine,” Eddie said, after a second, “but seriously, that Hildy thing was stalking me!” 

“It was not stalking you,” Buck said patiently. “I already told you, it’s called targeted advertising.”

“Yeah, as in I had a target on my back with Hildy’s name on it—which you had to go and make worse with that coffee maker.”

Buck grinned at that. It had been an excellent prank, and Chris had loved it. “You have to admit, though, it makes better coffee than your old one.” Which was why Eddie had been eyeing it, even if he’d never spend that kind of money on himself.

“You just bought it because you hated my old one.”

“Well, the improvement in my morning coffee has been a benefit.”

Hen coughed. “Drinking a lot of morning coffee at Eddie’s, are you?” 

“Uh, no, I, um—I fell asleep on the couch after going over to help him set it up.”

“Right,” she said. “Sure you did.”

There was nothing new or different about the teasing—everyone at the 118 had joked around like he and Eddie were a couple for years. He’d never thought to wonder why. It was too ridiculous to take seriously. The idea that he and Eddie were…that they felt…well, the whole thing was nuts. They were both straight.

_“I gotta mention, though, I already have a boyfriend….”_

And it wasn’t like the first time someone had made that mistake. 

_”You two have an adorable son.”_

Half a dozen times at bars where he’d politely turned down women came to mind, the way their eyes always traveled to Eddie in some kind of understanding before they’d walked away. He’d thought maybe they were just considering their chances there, but now, in a different light….

They’d thought he and Eddie were together. 

A whole series of outings, some with just Eddie, but most with Christopher, played through his mind, as he wondered how they’d appeared to the people around them. Every reaction from strangers suddenly seemed different, making him wish for a video of all of them to see whatever they’d seen. What he’d clearly been missing. 

Buck pulled out his phone and scrolled through his own Instagram feed, seeing the pictures through a different lens. Eddie was in more than anyone else, smiling at the camera in a way that made Buck’s stomach lurch almost as much as the sight of his own face in the pictures where it was trained on Eddie instead of the camera.

For fuck’s sake, when was someone planning on telling him that he’d been in love with Eddie for years?

For that matter, when was someone planning on telling him he was bisexual? 

“Buck?”

Buck jumped in his seat. “Sorry,” he said, not quite able to meet Eddie’s gaze. “I was distracted.” 

“I can tell.” Eddie’s voice was quiet, his eyebrows almost touching in a deep frown. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Buck said quickly. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just….” He seized on the first thing he saw on Instagram. “Firefox followed me back. I was surprised.” 

Eddie gave him that smile, and oh, yeah, okay. Buck totally recognized that stomach thing now. He’d had it the first time he saw Abbie. “I figured she might, once she got to know you.”

“I barely spent any time with her.” 

Eddie shrugged. “Guess it didn’t take much.” 

He was hiding something, but Buck wasn’t in the mood to go digging for secrets. Not when Eddie might turn the tables and discover the giant, massive, gay-shaped secret that Buck had apparently been hiding from them both.

Not the rest of the world, mind you, just the two of them. 

Buck faked a yawn—because he’d never felt less tired in his life. “I’m going to try to get a little more sleep before we make it to your parents’ house,” he said, snuggling back into his corner and closing his eyes.

He tried blank his mind, tried every mindfulness exercise his therapist had given him to just make it through this trip home. 

He could have a freak out once he was alone in his apartment, but until then, he had to keep it together.

***

Buck managed to feign sleep until he actually fell into a less than restful sleep full of dreams of Eddie that seemed too familiar to be new, even if he had no memory of them before now. 

A warm hand on his shoulder brought him out of it—Eddie’s hand, of course, because he would have to have an existential crisis over his sexuality while on a 20-some hour ride with the reason for said crisis. Oh, and with a stop at his parents’ house, too. 

If there was a Hell, it had to be something like this. 

“What’s up?” Buck said, rubbing his face. 

When he opened his eyes, Eddie had that smile again. “We’re about ten minutes from my parents’,” Eddie said. “Time to rise and shine.” 

“Hope you can manage without Eddie’s coffee maker,” Hen said.

Seriously, Buck was starting to hate Hildy now, too.

***

Eddie’s parents were every bit as nice to them as Buck remembered—though with the benefit of knowing how they’d treated Eddie in the past, Buck wasn’t feeling quite as charitable. He hid it well, though, giving them bright smiles, with more genuine smiles for Eddie’s sisters. 

Dinner was a loud affair, one that Buck would normally be right in the middle of. Instead, he stayed off to the side just a little, laughing in all the right places, responding when he had to, one part of his brain constantly focused on the tornado of new revelations in his head.

He didn’t miss the glances that Eddie kept shooting him, the slight frown making it clear he’d noticed that Buck wasn’t quite himself. Which would likely lead to questions later that Buck was nowhere near ready to answer. 

His phone dinged with a text message. One glance at the phone and he saw it was from TK. Buck looked up to see Eddie was focused somewhere else, before slipping out onto the patio to read the message in private. 

If TK was going to force any more bombshells, Buck didn’t need an audience.

_Hey sorry man. Didn’t mean to get the wrong impression earlier. Didn’t know you were with Eddie._

Buck blinked, but the message still said the same thing when he looked again.

 _Where’d you hear that?_ he wrote back.

TK’s answer came quickly. _Marjan told me you guys were a thing_

Buck stared at the words, but they literally didn’t make sense. _Where did she hear that?_

_She said it was obvious from the way he talked about you. Sorry if I’m out of line-if you guys aren’t out to work or whatever. It’s cool. We won’t say anything._

_Thanks man_ he wrote back, because it was good they weren’t saying anything, since there was nothing to say. Except…Eddie had talked about him to Marjan? And she’d been so convinced she’d told TK? 

Everyone thought they were a couple. Not that Buck had some crush. But that they were a couple.

So did that mean…

“Hey.” 

Buck dropped his phone at the sound of Eddie’s voice. “Hey,” he answered, a little hoarse, as he picked up his phone. “What’s up?”

“That’s what I came to ask you,” Eddie said, closing the patio door. “What’s up? You’ve been weird since we left Austin.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It kind of seems like it’s not,” Eddie said.

Buck sighed. He’d told Dr. Copeland she was right, that he hid his true feelings, but he’d had no idea he was hiding them from himself. And now that he knew, he was tired of hiding them from anyone. But this was Eddie—what if he balked at Buck’s admission? What if he withdrew, if he and Christopher stopped spending so much time with Buck?

But no. This was Eddie. Even if he didn’t feel the same, he wouldn’t do that. 

“Before we left, I told TK if he was ever in LA, we should get together. He thought I was hitting on him.” 

Eddie’s lips thinned for a second before he said, “And you’re upset he thought you were gay?”

“No, it’s not that. It...” Buck scrubbed a hand through his hair, looking for the right words. “It made me realize a lot of things,” he said finally. “So many things all at once that I’m still trying to wrap my head around them, and believe me, it’s chaos up here,” he tapped the side of his head, “on a good day, so it’s just a lot to process.”

“So…you were hitting on him?” Eddie said, frowning.

Buck shook his head. “No, but I realized the vibe he was getting, the one that has caused so many other people to react certain ways over the past couple of years, he wasn’t entirely off. And that led to another thought and another until I think everything is upside down right now.”

“Buck, you’re not making any sense.”

“I know,” Buck said. “I know that. Because almost nothing is making sense up here.” He tapped his head again. “But I also know,” he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them again and forced himself to look Eddie in the eyes, “I know that I’m in love with you,” he said, watching Eddie’s eyes widen at the admission. “And it doesn’t matter that you’re straight, or that—”

The rest of his words were cut off by Eddie’s lips in a hard and fast kiss that left Buck gripping Eddie’s waist to remain upright. Eddie paused just long enough to smile, and to get a smile in return from Buck, before he leaned in again.

When they came up for air, Buck said, “So…not straight, then?”

“Let’s just say I can bend…for the right person.”

Buck laughed, his forehead landing on Eddie’s shoulder, the laughter as much relief as amusement.

“You do realize,” Eddie said into Buck’s ear, “that you’ve done this when we have about another 14 hours to go in a truck with our coworkers, right?”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah.” Eddie pulled back just enough to lift Buck’s chin until they were face to face. “You’re serious about this?”

Buck nodded. “I may not have realized it until today, but I think I’ve been serious about it for a while, yeah.”

“Good.” Eddie leaned in for another kiss. “Pull yourself together, then, because we have a long ride to get through, and I suspect there will be a lot of mocking going on.”

“Oh God, can we just take a plane instead and meet them there?”

Eddie laughed. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “We’ll get through it.” He laced his hand through Buck’s and pulled him towards the door. “Together.”

\--  
END

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, feel free to leave me cake. Or nice words. Or both. )


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